Even before the large group of musicians of The Nile Project slap out sinewy rhythms on the Ethiopian kebero, pluck the Ugandan endongo, or breathily blow the Egyptian ney, people may have their world view stretched to see all the different nationalities playing as one -- and that is the point.

The ensemble is culled from the eleven countries that make up the Nile River basin, among them Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Yet few think of these disparate lands as one entity. Nile Project founder Mina Girgis said the group's organizing principle was to make people in the basin realize their commonalities as opposed to their long-held differences.

Girgis, an enthnomusicologist and entrepreneur, looked at the decades of fighting over water rights regarding the world's longest river and began to think about how music could act as a universal language -- or at least a regional one. The Nile Project has now toured three continents, mixing concerts with workshops at colleges. It is ending its latest tour with a concert in Princeton.

The Nile Project, pictured here in a concert in Al Azhar Park, Cairo, Egypt, will conclude its current tour on Saturday at the McCarter Theater in Princeton.Matjaz Kacicnik

Girgis said the "ah-ha" moment came at a concert of The Debo Band, a Brooklyn-based group that melds Ethiopian pop with American and European elements. He had recently returned from a trip to Egypt during the 2011 revolution. Girgis was familiar with boundary-crossing projects such as the Silk Road Project and The Gypsy Caravan Tour, which highlighted the Roma people's migration. He wondered if he could create a musical platform that would improve the empathy among the Nile countries.

The Egyptian-born Girgis talked about the idea with Ethiopian-American singer Meklit Hadero, and the co-founders were soon scouring America and Africa for musicians.

"It was difficult to find the musicians we were looking for," Girgis said. "We didn't know what's out there."

THE NILE PROJECT

While he was an expert in Egyptian music, he didn't know where to start when it came to finding traditional musicians in, say, Uganda or Tanzania. The idea took about a year and a half to become a reality, in part because the musicians had to learn about the issues underlying the project.

"We definitely didn't want to start a fusion project where we would bring people together for a couple of days and let one person play a riff and another person to solo on top," Girgis said. "We really wanted to make a stew that allowed people the time to cook together to create a well-thought-out collaboration." For the musicians, he said, it was like "being in a music school where they are each teaching each other."

Most of the collective's songs are original, but mostly do not overtly address politics or the river. The 27-member ensemble is acoustic, combining traditional string and percussion instruments with vocals in several languages. In concert, the musicians do very little talking about politics or water rights, letting their unusual collaboration speak for itself.

"We didn't want to make what you call NGO [non-government organization] music," Girgis said. "Where it starts with the message and you make the music around the message...[That's] more like a gig and less like art."

The disparate music traditions have only a few things in common, Girgis said. For example, there is a lyre that has different names and playing styles in each country, but is constructed similarly across the region.

"That diversity is what makes the Nile Project an interesting musical undertaking," he said. "When you combine these you are creating something new that didn't exist before....[We are] not just digging deep into what we have in common, but sharing the uniqueness of all of our respective traditions."

The resulting music, he said, is the "result of deeply shared relationships - less about the notes and more about the relations between the notes."

Girgis said "we're barely getting started," with plans for another album, more tours and other configurations pursuing different sounds. The collective also plans to create academic fellowships to spread the collaborative spirit embodied in the music.

"Using these musical conversations," he added, "we could really get audiences from these different countries seeing how much they have in common....get them to be culturally curious about one another."

Even before they hear the music, Girgis said, audiences see "this imagined community of people from all over this river that have never united on a stage play music together."

"It's like you are redefining geography in everyone's minds," he said. "This bio-region predates the political lines that have been drawn on the map for hundreds of years."